Eureka emerges from stealth to secure cloud data stores with automation

Digital transformation is driving cloud adoption in the enterprise. In 2020, more than 50% of organizations moved their workloads to the cloud, and Gartner predicts that companies will increase spending on cloud platforms by 14% within two years. But while the cloud is bringing greater flexibility and capabilities than on-premises systems, including remote data stores, it’s also posing a challenge for security teams struggling to keep up with the pace of data proliferation. A recent Cloud Security Alliance survey of IT professionals found that 58% are worried about security in the cloud, with the majority citing network security and staff-related issues as their top concerns.

Accelerating cloud adoption has catalyzed the launch of startups offering products designed to protect cloud-stored data. Druva, for instance, provides cloud data backup and recovery solutions, while Rewind delivers a cloud service for the backup of data residing in software-as-a-service apps. A new entrant looking to make a splash is Eureka, whose software aims to manage an entire organization’s cloud data posture.

“Digital migration post-pandemic accelerated the data boom, increasing the overall level of urgency for more effective and accessible cloud data store security,” Eureka CEO Liat Hayun told VentureBeat in an interview. “Digital migration post-pandemic accelerated the data boom, increasing the overall level of urgency for more effective and accessible cloud data store security.”

Cloud data security

Tel Aviv, Israel-based Eureka, which emerged from stealth today, was founded by Hayun and Asaf Weiss. Both previously worked at Palo Alto Networks, where Hayun was VP of product management and Weiss was the senior director of engineering.

Eureka uses automation in tandem with a policy engine to integrate with cloud platforms, processes, and workflows and discover and classify existing data. The platform enables datastore inventory and contextualization, policy definition and deployment, and risk monitoring and management, providing real-time views of data stores and the risks associated with them.

By simply connecting Eureka to organizational cloud accounts, Eureka automatically identifies all data stores present and understands the types of data in them. Eureka then evaluates the risk in each data store to provide quick and non-intrusive insight into an enterprise’s overall cloud data footprint and security posture.

“Eureka [lets users] choose and customize from a pre-built selection or creating their own. Eureka then automatically translates and generates these policies into a set of platform-specific controls for all relevant data stores,” Weiss explained to VentureBeat via email. “[The software] continuously monitors for and alerts data store owners directly on policy violations and non-compliant configurations, evaluating the level of risk in each violation and recommending risk-prioritized remediation, actions, and controls. [It] then allows [users] to track overall posture and compliance improvement over time.”

Growing data stores

The number of data stores that companies have to manage is only growing, not shrinking — and breaches can be incredibly costly. Even before the pandemic, the average organization was using 400 sources to feed business intelligence and analytics systems. As of 2021, around 50% of all of this data is stored in the cloud — illustrating the security challenge. Seventy million data records were stolen or leaked in 2018 alone due to poorly-configured Amazon Web Services S3 cloud storage buckets.

It’s unrealistic to expect a single product to combat all attacks that might come a company’s way. As VentureBeat covered last year, many of the advancements within cybersecurity — such as the use of data analytics and machine learning — have in turn led to new security issues, like increasing the attack surface. But Weiss believes that tools like Eureka stand to make a difference in an increasingly treacherous cloud landscape.

“[With Eureka,] engineers can have more ownership around the security posture of the data stores they maintain, enabling them to responsibly leverage any cloud data store without constraints. Privacy, risk, compliance and security teams can manage a single and combined repository of policy requirements,” Weiss added. “Security teams can [also] save precious time [with Eureka] by configuring and protecting cloud data stores in their environments without having to develop deep expertise for every tech stack they encounter.

To date, Eureka has raised $8 million in funding from YL Ventures and individual investors including Google Cloud director of product security assurance David Hannigan, former Akami Technologies CSO Andy Ellis, Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport, and Zendesk CISO Maarten Van Horenbeeck. The company plans to spend the capital on hiring, sales, and product development efforts.

Originally appeared on: TheSpuzz